No matter how many times Donald Trump says it, Mar-a-Lago is not the
“Southern White House.” It’s a ticky-tacky Florida extravagance that
was ordered up as a vanity by a cereal heiress and designed by the set
director for the Ziegfeld Follies.
It’s a mixture of Arabian Nights fantasy and generic kitsch so over-the-top appalling that Congress actively rejected the property when it was offered to the Park Service. It was up for sale for $20 in 1981.
It’s also a vastly insecure heap in which diners get to overhear Trump planning military operations during the weekly “Prime Rib Night” and Chinese nationals just keep wandering in. It’s a place where, for the bargain price of $250,000 a year, members can slide Trump policy proposals on a cocktail napkin and end up secretly running the Veterans Administration or on the line for billions extorted from the Middle East. Mar-a-Lago is where Donald Trump goes when he wants to roll around in gold-plated corruption, unconstrained by the austerity imposed by the humble little White House.
Trump also goes there to play golf, but on Wednesday he was angry, angry at the “lamestream Media” for reporting that he played golf during the siege of the American embassy in Iraq. Trump repeatedly huffed that he did not play golf on Wednesday. Which would be easier to believe, had he not been pictured in golf clothes, riding in a golf cart, with his golf clubs. Still, it did seem that there was a moment during the siege when Trump actually departed the links. Not a long moment, as he was certainly back out there making divots on Wednesday. But Trump did appear to make a token wave toward the idea that an international crisis might merit taking a pause on his backswing.
But certainly Trump isn’t letting anything less than a full brink-of-war event interfere with his critical schedule of sending the Secret Service scurrying for balls in the rough. CNN is just one of several sources that tallied up Trump’s time on the course at the end of 2019 and found that he spent a good 20% of his time directly out there riding around in carts. That’s 252 days at a Trump golf course and 333 days at a Trump resort since taking office. Well before he finishes out year four, Trump will have taken a full year of vacation.
By far the largest share of that time has been spent in the Grape-Nuts-funded fantasyland of Mar-a-Lago. And while Trump’s golf-playing is the most visible sign of his self-indulgence, it’s what he does off the links that’s the bigger concern.
Trump loves going to Mar-a-Lago for a very good reason. He may not be able to attend a major sporting event, or visit any other public venue, without meeting a rousing chorus of boos, but he can always be sure of support from those he calls “his people.” The members of Mar-a-Lago are not there for a golf course that doesn’t even rate in the nation’s top 100. They’re shelling out a quarter-million a year for access. Trump makes absolutely no bones about giving them that access.
At Mar-a-Lago, he’s at home. At Mar-a-Lago he doesn’t have to keep up even the pretense of caring for anyone who isn’t willing and able to pay to be at his elbow.
As Politico reports, Mar-a-Lago allows Trump to invite who he wants, and talk as he wants, without the “gatekeepers” of Washington. To liven up the 2019 holiday season, guests included child-murdering Navy Seal Eddie Gallagher, whom Trump forgave even after members of his own team saw him convicted of war crimes. And of course Rudy Giuliani was there to chat with Trump about the trip to Ukraine that he conducted right in the middle of Trump’s impeachment in the House, and the ongoing effort to cook up some dirt that can be used against Joe Biden. And Giuliani wasn’t the only lawyer who got to exchange a “Happy holidays.” Trump supporter, and former attorney to Jeffrey Epstein, Alan Dershowitz was also there to chat in the buffet line. Like Trump, Dershowitz is accused of not just being an acquaintance of Epstein’s, but taking part in his underage sex trafficking.
It’s a mixture of Arabian Nights fantasy and generic kitsch so over-the-top appalling that Congress actively rejected the property when it was offered to the Park Service. It was up for sale for $20 in 1981.
It’s also a vastly insecure heap in which diners get to overhear Trump planning military operations during the weekly “Prime Rib Night” and Chinese nationals just keep wandering in. It’s a place where, for the bargain price of $250,000 a year, members can slide Trump policy proposals on a cocktail napkin and end up secretly running the Veterans Administration or on the line for billions extorted from the Middle East. Mar-a-Lago is where Donald Trump goes when he wants to roll around in gold-plated corruption, unconstrained by the austerity imposed by the humble little White House.
Trump also goes there to play golf, but on Wednesday he was angry, angry at the “lamestream Media” for reporting that he played golf during the siege of the American embassy in Iraq. Trump repeatedly huffed that he did not play golf on Wednesday. Which would be easier to believe, had he not been pictured in golf clothes, riding in a golf cart, with his golf clubs. Still, it did seem that there was a moment during the siege when Trump actually departed the links. Not a long moment, as he was certainly back out there making divots on Wednesday. But Trump did appear to make a token wave toward the idea that an international crisis might merit taking a pause on his backswing.
But certainly Trump isn’t letting anything less than a full brink-of-war event interfere with his critical schedule of sending the Secret Service scurrying for balls in the rough. CNN is just one of several sources that tallied up Trump’s time on the course at the end of 2019 and found that he spent a good 20% of his time directly out there riding around in carts. That’s 252 days at a Trump golf course and 333 days at a Trump resort since taking office. Well before he finishes out year four, Trump will have taken a full year of vacation.
By far the largest share of that time has been spent in the Grape-Nuts-funded fantasyland of Mar-a-Lago. And while Trump’s golf-playing is the most visible sign of his self-indulgence, it’s what he does off the links that’s the bigger concern.
Trump loves going to Mar-a-Lago for a very good reason. He may not be able to attend a major sporting event, or visit any other public venue, without meeting a rousing chorus of boos, but he can always be sure of support from those he calls “his people.” The members of Mar-a-Lago are not there for a golf course that doesn’t even rate in the nation’s top 100. They’re shelling out a quarter-million a year for access. Trump makes absolutely no bones about giving them that access.
At Mar-a-Lago, he’s at home. At Mar-a-Lago he doesn’t have to keep up even the pretense of caring for anyone who isn’t willing and able to pay to be at his elbow.
As Politico reports, Mar-a-Lago allows Trump to invite who he wants, and talk as he wants, without the “gatekeepers” of Washington. To liven up the 2019 holiday season, guests included child-murdering Navy Seal Eddie Gallagher, whom Trump forgave even after members of his own team saw him convicted of war crimes. And of course Rudy Giuliani was there to chat with Trump about the trip to Ukraine that he conducted right in the middle of Trump’s impeachment in the House, and the ongoing effort to cook up some dirt that can be used against Joe Biden. And Giuliani wasn’t the only lawyer who got to exchange a “Happy holidays.” Trump supporter, and former attorney to Jeffrey Epstein, Alan Dershowitz was also there to chat in the buffet line. Like Trump, Dershowitz is accused of not just being an acquaintance of Epstein’s, but taking part in his underage sex trafficking.
As Politico notes, all of this makes Trump “much more comfortable,” because at the White House there are staffers who “try to keep out shady individuals.” Trump doesn’t just like shady individuals. Trump is a shady individual. Being able to yuk it up with his fellow thieves, manipulators, and con men makes Trump feel “liberated.”
Mar-a-Lago, where everyone present knows that the reason they’re in the room is because they’re paying to be close to Trump, gives Trump exactly the ego-boost he wants. As one regular reports, “The people around him are increasingly the true believers and it’s almost like a religious revival when he shows up there. They jump up and down, they shout, they scream his praises.”
Mar-a-Lago is a Trump rally where Trump spends almost a third of his time in a golden bubble of screaming adoration from people whose morality perfectly aligns with Trump’s. Which almost certainly makes it far more dangerous to the United States than either the Kremlin or Pyongyang.
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